Juxtapositions of cityscape and home
Carts, Hedges, Lions
by Taizo Yamamoto (with essays by Kevin Chong, Aaron Peck and Jackie Wong)
Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024
$40 / 9781773272429
Reviewed by Stella Gatto
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Captured between the pages of Taizo Yamamoto’s Carts, Hedges, Lions, are 33 drawings by the Vancouver-based architect. Amidst the three sections of the hardcover are accompanying essays by writers Aaron Peck and Jackie Wong and a fictional short story by Kevin Chong. While flipping through the pages of Yamamoto’s book, I am immediately struck by its crisp layout—each drawing is dedicated its own page and treated as its own singular subject. Suspended on the paper’s white surface, the effect is one of tranquil reflection, highlighting Yamamoto’s exercise in line, shading, detail, and ability to present a range of objects captured with the soft carbon of his graphite pencil.
The book’s preface offers readers a brief description about Yamamoto’s work. As a Vancouver architect, he is primarily concerned with different expressions relating to notions of home in the ever-changing cityscape he grew up in. Following the introduction is the first section of the book uniformly titled “Shopping Carts” numbered 1 through 20. These drawings—made between the years 2005-2008—take the every-day shopping cart as their primary subject. Although the structure of the carts remains relatively similar in their metal design, their contents engage with the shape of the carts in ways that highlight the relationship between space and volume. For instance, juxtaposing Cart #4 and Cart #10, Yamamoto captures the tension between both revealing and concealing the contents of the carts. With its relatively sparse items, Cart #4 holds only a few crushed plastic bottles, empty 1 litre milk jugs, and a crumpled trash bag. Whereas, in an almost Jean Claude and Christo-like fashion, Cart #10 echoes an exercise in wrapping, as paracord straps blanket and hide the cart’s contents from our view. As Peck notes in his essay regarding the carts, “[E]ach one hints at a story, the plot of which remains unknown to us.” Taken as glimpses into the lives of their owners, the carts act as a reminder of Vancouver’s ever-increasing unaffordability.
The second section titled “Hedges” continues in quasi-photographic quality with an intricate study of five privacy hedges. Yamamoto depicts the dense foliage of the hedges which, when positioned against the white page, appear to float. This sensation is further strengthened by the tight horizontal composition of each image. Accompanying this series is a fictional short story by Kevin Chong, which reflects on neighbours and the tragic loss they faced when their daughter was reported missing. Noting how their hedges, once perfectly pruned, became overgrown and unruly as each month passed without their child, their function as screens further shut out the world while the family suffered with each passing day. Filtered through Chong’s narration, Yamamoto’s hedges become a metaphor of safety and order, or the loss thereof.
The third and final set of images fall under the heading “Lion Gates”—an immediate visual marker. Those who are familiar with East Vancouver and parts of Burnaby will quickly recognize the white stone statues of lions as they adorn the front gates of homes. This series, with its colour palette composed of rusty orange, carmine, and umber, draw attention to the tightly stacked bricks as symbols of protection. Jackie Wong’s sequent essay provides insight into the colloquially-named “Vancouver Special” style homes; in particular, the refuge they provided many newcomers to the city from across the globe in the mid-twentieth century.
As an exercise in documentation, Carts, Hedges, Lions juxtaposes variations in formal subjectivity. Whether illustrating the unique contents or uniform structure of carts, the carefully pruned or overgrown hedges guarding homes, or the materiality of prefabricated elements such as iron, brick, or stone, Yamamoto’s drawings encourage us to take a closer look at the structures which surround our daily environment; his works giving pause as we move through the place we call home.
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Stella Gatto earned her MA in Art History at the University of British Columbia. Her paper titled “Synthesizing a dual-definition of Facade in the Western Palaces of Yuanming Yuan: Art, Politics, and Place-making in the Garden of Perfect Brightness” looked at the Imperial Summer Palace gardens in Beijing, China. Her research area for her PhD work at UBC, in which she is in her second year, is also Art History. She recently could be found travelling through Italy, but is based in East Vancouver.
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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